


loud

by rosielibrary



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Fluff, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 00:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16843069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosielibrary/pseuds/rosielibrary
Summary: “It’ll be alright. Just, uh… Don’t forget to breathe ’n stuff. Try to focus on that, y’know? Ignore the noises outside if you can. Focus on your breathin’.”You try and do exactly that. In and out, in and out. Stan doesn’t watch you, but rather stares at a point on the wall instead. You pretend you don’t catch him looking between that there point and you sitting on top of his… questionable reading material.(panic attack/sensory overload mention)





	loud

You feel like everything hits you in waves: the noise, the lights, that one really crisp smell of fall. The candy wrapper in your hand smushes as your fingers curl to fists.

Everything’s too loud.

You were fine earlier. The party only started a couple hours ago, and it’s not like there’s any alcohol on the premises. Wendy mentioned it to you earlier that day when you were hanging out— the two of you became buddy-buddy after you met her in the gift shop. Apparently it’s at Stan’s “house”, but Mabel’s the one pulling the strings for this shindig. When the Mabel in question nearly begged for you to come to her and Dipper’s party, it’s not like you could say no to that face. So you dashed out to the nearest pop-up Halloween store (they always manage to find somewhere to squeeze in around this time, don’t they) and grabbed a costume. It’s still fairly early in the month, so you thankfully had quite a bit of choice. That must’ve been the line of thinking for the twins, as they had a table piled high with full-size candy bars that normally disappear by at least the fifteenth of October. Sly.

You don’t catch sight of Stan until five minutes after the party started that night, sporting his (“booooring” by Mabel’s standards) vampire costume that he’s probably worn for several years on the run, according to the ominous stain on the collar of the white shirt and the holes in the flare of his cape. Regardless, he swings said cape above his jaw and laughs, chasing after Mabel and Dipper and yelling about catching them in an awful attempt of a Bela Lugosi accent. He tried, at the very least. You snort when they dash past you, blowing the white paper lanterns— they’re ghosts, Mabel insists— above your head around the edging of the roof.

The Mystery Shack holds a Halloween party every year, assumedly, judging by the crazy amount of decorations hung around the building. That could just be Mabel’s doing, though. She twirls around in a turquoise dress and blonde wig, threatening to hit passers-by on the head with her sparkly pink magic wand. Something about a starry butterfly, her costume. You’re not sure why she has little red horns, but she looks cute. You let it slide.

She chatters something to Dipper, who’s dressed up as a… Ghoulbasher, right. Tan jumpsuit and what looks like a vacuum cleaner attached to his back (something about neutrons and knapsacks), Dipper laughs at whatever his sister tells him, but you don’t hear what it is.

You don’t really hear anything, now that you think about it.

Slipping behind two men dressed as that video-game plumber and a pink princess (you recognize them as those sweet but bumbling policemen on second glance), you sneak into the Shack and find an abandoned room to hide in until you can go back outside again.

What you don’t realize as you sit atop a pile of Fully Clothed Women magazines is that you’re in Stan’s bedroom. What you also don’t realize is that Stan went back inside a few moments after you did, but missed you going into his room and barged in in search of his “very real vampire fangs” to scare one of the “bratty kids” outside.

He’s mid-sentence as the door creaks open, the incoming light illuminating your crouched self on the floor (and his magazines) and he falters.

“Oh, uh. Hey. Kid. … What are you doing in here?”

You don’t even open your mouth to reply. Stan’s voice sounds echo-y and distant and you hug your knees closer to your chest.

“Y’seen my vampire teeth around? I got some children outside I wanna scar for life.”

You shrug. His shoulders slump and gives the room a once-around to double-check, but his gaze falls on you. Your hands cup your ears, eyes open and unblinking, body tense. Stan’s face lights up in realization, but it quickly darkens with worry.

“Can ya nod or shake your head?”

You look up at him, feeling your hands shake on the sides of your face. And you nod.

“Alrighty, there’s a step, right?” He smiles— he smiles, you’re so used to the cheesy selling grin or his cheeky smirk, but this. This is different.

Stan steps forward, flips out his cape before it gets sat on, and plops cross-legged on the floor in front of you. He’s a good few feet away— he’s making sure you have space.

“Do you, uh… Do you feel sick?”

You shake your head. Then nod. Then shake your head again—

“Is it too loud outside? That what’s botherin’ ya?”

… You nod.

“Everything’s mixin’ together and it’s crazy fu—freakin’ loud, right?”

You nod again, watching Stan quizzically. How does he… know?

Stan gets back to his feet and turns away, and for a moment you think he’s leaving, but he grabs a blanket from a high-up shelf and unfolds it, carefully covering your shoulders.

“Ford used to get these every once in a while. When we were kids.”

The blanket smells like Stan. You curl your arms and sheath yourself in it, and he gently pulls part of it over your head like a hood.

“It’ll be alright. Just, uh… Don’t forget to breathe ’n stuff. Try to focus on that, y’know? Ignore the noises outside if you can. Focus on your breathin’.”

You try and do exactly that. In and out, in and out. Stan doesn’t watch you, but rather stares at a point on the wall instead. You pretend you don’t catch him looking between that there point and you sitting on top of his… questionable reading material.

“Uh… can I…?”

He nudges in beside you and carefully, slowly, puts an arm around you. He hovers, hesitating until you relax underneath him, and his arm rests atop your shoulders.

“Just gimme a solid punch if you get uncomfortable or anythin’, alright?”

You manage a small laugh, and Stan grins. The two of you sit like that for a short while; you find yourself enveloped in Stan’s odd amalgamation of scents. Cheap cologne, glue, pine trees. That really solid guy smell that he somehow held onto in his old age. He is pretty spry for an old guy.

“You wanna go back out there? — You don’t have to, if you don’t wanna yet. I just remembered it’s the pumpkin pie eating contest in ten minutes and I have to win or I owe Mabel five bucks.”

Of course. You nudge Stan’s arm and he shrugs in protest, smirking.

“What? I know I can beat a bunch of kids at eating. I’m me.”

Sure, sure, you mutter, but can’t help but laugh to punctuate the sentence. Stan stands up and holds out a hand to you to help you to your feet.

“Anyway, uh. Hopefully I helped.” There’s that legitimately genuine smile again. You do your best to return it, but you’re a little frazzled from the whole experience that you feel like it looks like a grimace. Whoops.

“If you wanna stick around here for a while, go ahead, kid. I’ve got pie to stuff into my mouth in a pace most men wouldn’t believe.”  
Stay here and read his Fully Clothed Women magazines, perhaps? At your unexpected teasing jab, Stan flushes red as his cape.

“I-I mean. If you like classical literature, maybe.”

You burst into actual, loud laughter at that, and Stan follows soon after despite one of his feet pushing the stack of magazines under his bed.

“Well, I’m gonna go and avoid any more weird conversations like this one,” Stan says, popping the high collar of his vampire cape as he turns on his heel to the door. Before he leaves, he stops and looks to you once more.

“And, uh, if you have any more things like that. Just lemme know, kid.”

You’re in too stunned a silence to reply as he closes the door behind him. In all the times you’ve had a conversation with Stan, it’s never been so… Nice, you suppose the word would be. He’s not been cruel, of course, but he’s kept his distance from you as you hung out with Wendy and his niece and nephew. You guess he’s never been one for amicable chat with the youngsters; even with Wendy he’s still boss-like.

But he’s not your boss.

You come out of his room in time to see him lose the pie eating contest to Grenda, who’s dressed up as some form of wrestler. With his blanket still draped over your shoulders you shuffle to the edge of the competition, standing next to Wendy, wearing a t-shirt that reads “this IS my costume”.

“Hey, dude.” Wendy bumps your shoulder with hers, arching a concerned brow. “I saw you run off earlier. Everything alright?”

You bring Stan’s blanket closer and watch as he gets a pie to the face from a triumphant (and sugar-high) Grenda.

You’re okay now.

— — — — —

Stan grumbles as he picks up plastic cups, streamers, and various silly string remains the day after Mabel and Dipper’s party. They’re helping him clean, of course, but they gave him a much larger section of the yard to de-trash since they’re “small enough” to do the front of the Shack on their own. Stan would say he wonders where Mabel got her lying skills from, but ironically, he’d be lying if he said he didn’t know.

He drops the trash back on the porch with a huff and sits on the couch, wiping sweat off his brow, before he realizes he’s not sitting on the cushion. Lifting up and pulling the… thing from underneath his thigh, he realizes it’s his blanket that he lent you— he lent you.

Taking a cautionary look left, right, left again, right again to make sure the kids are nowhere in sight, he gives the blanket a small, nonchalant sniff.

It smells… Warm? That’s the only way he’d be able to describe it. Warm and content and… nice. Stan finds himself smiling as he rests his head against the blanket in his hands, the stress of cleaning after the party dissipating almost immediately.

And then he realizes there’s an orange, sticky soda stain just a few inches to the left of his face.


End file.
